Companies that changed India

In most instances, this dozen transformed not only themselves, but also the larger universe around them.

Milk Might{mosimage}For an economy its size, India holds a shameful record: 43 per cent of its children are malnourished. This would have been worse but for another factoid: India is the world's largest producer of milk, the richest source of protein for children, with a production of some 118 million tonnes. Much of the credit for this vests at Kaira, Gujarat, where a mechanical engineer, Verghese Kurien, set up a dairy in 1948. And, more importantly, helped local headman Tribhuvandas Patel organise a cooperative of dairy farmers. That effort grew into the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, or GCMMF, the Amul brand and, later, a nationwide grid of district milk cooperatives under Operation Flood - changing lives of both consumer and farmers. GCMMF's Managing Director R.S. Sodhi sums up its ethos: "We serve masses on both the demand and supply sides of our business."